Director of Cricket Reveals Reason For Mohammed Siraj's Release

Because of the nature of the IPL, there will always be a churn. It does come as a shock, though, to lose one of the franchise's main players who has contributed to the team's success over the years. This is what happened as soon as the word broke that Mohammed Siraj would be going up for auction. Given Siraj's tight bond with previous captain Virat Kohli and his wide variety of bowling abilities, Royal Challengers Bengaluru Director of Cricket Mo Bobat acknowledged that the decision was difficult.

Mo Bobat said, “We’re all too aware of the need to establish a strong Indian core to our team going into the IPL 2025 season, and we feel that our retention decisions are a significant step in the right direction. It’s great to continue Virat’s lengthy association with RCB, I’m confident that a new group of players will benefit hugely from his inspirational and infectious energy, and his commitment to high standards,"

Mohammed Siraj's release season revealed:

MO Bobat 🎙️: "we know Siraj' release will surprise many. It was tough & took most of our time to decide on him. we are looking for some perticular skills in bowling department that needed to perform at Chinnaswamy with Variety
we want to keep our options open for the auction pic.twitter.com/3bCED3TLYL

— RCB Xtra (@Xtra_vids) November 1, 2024

As quoted by the RCB website, Mo Bobat also stated, "Probably the discussion that took up the most time for us actually was our decision to whether we retain or release Mohammed Siraj. When he's got his tail up, he's got that real fire that you can see that becomes infectious for the rest of the team. He bounces quite strongly off Virat Kohli and those two as a combination have been quite powerful. It was a big decision for us to make to not retain Siraj because of all of those skills and attributes,”

He further added, “Regarding Mohammed Siraj, not retaining him was our toughest decision. We value his contributions, having been a strong performer for RCB and India over the years. However, we wanted to enter the auction with as many options open as possible, especially to build a balanced bowling attack capable of competing effectively in the IPL and other formats."

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